Spatial management of wildlife disease

The spread of wildlife diseases is a major threat to livestock, human health, resource-based recreation, and biodiversity conservation. The development of economically sound wildlife disease-management strategies requires an understanding of the links between ecological functions (e.g. disease transmission and wildlife dispersal) and economic choices, and the associated tradeoffs. Spatial linkages are particularly relevant. Yet while ecologists have long-argued that space is important, prior economic work has largely ignored spatial issues. In this article, we develop a simple spatial model to illustrate how harvest strategies, inside and outside a disease reservoir, could affect disease prevalence rates within the reservoir, dispersion into new areas, and the associated economic tradeoffs.